Little Dorrit, Charles Dickens [big ebook reader txt] 📗

worshipper of riches who had helped to set him on his pedestal, would have done better to worship the Devil point-blank. So, the talk, lashed louder and higher by confirmation on confirmation, and by edition after edition of the evening papers, swelled into such a roar when night came, as might have brought one to believe that a solitary watcher on the gallery above the Dome of St. Paul’s would have perceived the night air to be laden with a heavy muttering of the name of Merdle, coupled with every form of execration.

For by that time it was known that the late Mr. Merdle’s complaint had been simply Forgery and Robbery. He, the uncouth object of such widespread adulation, the sitter at great men’s feasts, the roc’s egg of great ladies’ assemblies, the subduer of exclusiveness, the leveller of pride, the patron of patrons, the bargain-driver with a Minister for Lordships of the Circumlocution Office, the recipient of more acknowledgment within some ten or fifteen years, at most, than had been bestowed in England upon all peaceful public benefactors, and upon all the leaders of all the Arts and Sciences, with all their works to testify for them, during two centuries at least⁠—he, the shining wonder, the new constellation to be followed by the wise men bringing gifts, until it stopped over a certain carrion at the bottom of a bath and disappeared⁠—was simply the greatest Forger and the greatest Thief that ever cheated the gallows.

XXVI Reaping the Whirlwind

With a precursory sound of hurried breath and hurried feet, Mr. Pancks rushed into Arthur Clennam’s Countinghouse. The Inquest was over, the letter was public, the Bank was broken, the other model structures of straw had taken fire and were turned to smoke. The admired piratical ship had blown up, in the midst of a vast fleet of ships of all rates, and boats of all sizes; and on the deep was nothing but ruin; nothing but burning hulls, bursting magazines, great guns self-exploded tearing friends and neighbours to pieces, drowning men clinging to unseaworthy spars and going down every minute, spent swimmers, floating dead, and sharks.

The usual diligence and order of the Countinghouse at the Works were overthrown. Unopened letters and unsorted papers lay strewn about the desk. In the midst of these tokens of prostrated energy and dismissed hope, the master of the Countinghouse stood idle in his usual place, with his arms crossed on the desk, and his head bowed down upon them.

Mr. Pancks rushed in and saw him, and stood still. In another minute, Mr. Pancks’s arms were on the desk, and Mr. Pancks’s head was bowed down upon them; and for some time they remained in these attitudes, idle and silent, with the width of the little room between them.

Mr. Pancks was the first to lift up his head and speak.

“I persuaded you to it, Mr. Clennam. I know it. Say what you will. You can’t say more to me than I say to myself. You can’t say more than I deserve.”

“O, Pancks, Pancks!” returned Clennam, “don’t speak of deserving. What do I myself deserve!”

“Better luck,” said Pancks.

“I,” pursued Clennam, without attending to him, “who have ruined my partner! Pancks, Pancks, I have ruined Doyce! The honest, self-helpful, indefatigable old man who has worked his way all through his life; the man who has contended against so much disappointment, and who has brought out of it such a good and hopeful nature; the man I have felt so much for, and meant to be so true and useful to; I have ruined him⁠—brought him to shame and disgrace⁠—ruined him, ruined him!”

The agony into which the reflection wrought his mind was so distressing to see, that Mr. Pancks took hold of himself by the hair of his head, and tore it in desperation at the spectacle.

“Reproach me!” cried Pancks. “Reproach me, sir, or I’ll do myself an injury. Say⁠—You fool, you villain. Say⁠—Ass, how could you do it; Beast, what did you mean by it! Catch hold of me somewhere. Say something abusive to me!” All the time, Mr. Pancks was tearing at his tough hair in a most pitiless and cruel manner.

“If you had never yielded to this fatal mania, Pancks,” said Clennam, more in commiseration than retaliation, “it would have been how much better for you, and how much better for me!”

“At me again, sir!” cried Pancks, grinding his teeth in remorse. “At me again!”

“If you had never gone into those accursed calculations, and brought out your results with such abominable clearness,” groaned Clennam, “it would have been how much better for you, Pancks, and how much better for me!”

“At me again, sir!” exclaimed Pancks, loosening his hold of his hair; “at me again, and again!”

Clennam, however, finding him already beginning to be pacified, had said all he wanted to say, and more. He wrung his hand, only adding, “Blind leaders of the blind, Pancks! Blind leaders of the blind! But Doyce, Doyce, Doyce; my injured partner!” That brought his head down on the desk once more.

Their former attitudes and their former silence were once more first encroached upon by Pancks.

“Not been to bed, sir, since it began to get about. Been high and low, on the chance of finding some hope of saving any cinders from the fire. All in vain. All gone. All vanished.”

“I know it,” returned Clennam, “too well.”

Mr. Pancks filled up a pause with a groan that came out of the very depths of his soul.

“Only yesterday, Pancks,” said Arthur; “only yesterday, Monday, I had the fixed intention of selling, realising, and making an end of it.”

“I can’t say as much for myself, sir,” returned Pancks. “Though it’s wonderful how many people I’ve heard of, who were going to realise yesterday, of all days in the three hundred and sixty-five, if it hadn’t been too late!”

His steam-like breathings, usually droll in their effect, were more tragic than so many groans: while from head to foot, he was in that begrimed, besmeared, neglected state, that he might have been an